Selected category: Oncology

Tecan recently teamed up with Nature Medicine to host a symposium on the latest ground-breaking research into cancer diagnosis and treatment, from novel biomarkers to personalized vaccines and cell-based therapies. A select group of industry leaders and key experts in oncology came together for a two-day event in Boston, Massachusetts, to accelerate research and clinical discoveries through better partnering between industry and academia. This summit highlighted Tecan’s dedication to assembling leaders in cancer – along with technologists, vendors and solutions providers – so they can share knowledge and expertise, and work collaboratively to battle cancer.

Tecan Gives Back is an employee-driven initiative supporting charities that help to improve people’s health and quality of life. Created as part of the company’s 40th anniversary celebrations, the scheme gives employees the opportunity to earn ‘kilometers’ for their chosen charity by engaging in fitness and wellness activities, or by volunteering. These are then pooled and converted into cash donations at the end of the month-long challenge. One of this year’s beneficiaries is World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), a global research charity focused on reducing the risk of developing cancer and improving the outcomes for those already diagnosed.

Multiple myeloma (MM) remains an incurable blood cancer, but recent advancements in treatment have significantly improved patient prognosis and quality of life. UK-based specialist diagnostic company The Binding Site has developed a new strategy that monitors pre-cancerous conditions associated with MM as well as treatment success, helping to guide therapeutic pathways with more accurate information.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men, killing hundreds of thousands each year. However, the current routine screening method for checking prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels generates false positives in an alarming number of cases, leading to thousands of unnecessary biopsies each year. To combat this, Life Length has developed ProsTAV®, a state-of-the-art in vitro diagnostic test that uses telomere associated variables (TAVs) to identify patients with a higher risk of prostate cancer, aiding screening initiatives and reducing the number of unnecessary biopsies

In his book The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee tells the story of one of the turning points in the history of cancer medicine. A turning point that he dates to May 1947.

Massively parallel sequencing has rapidly become a must-have tool of the trade in molecular biology and drug discovery research. In recent years, the cost of next generation sequencing (NGS) has declined exponentially, while throughput, accuracy and read lengths have soared, and multiple regulatory-compliant sequencing technologies have now achieved commercial success. Advances in NGS – combined with global efforts to identify and catalog genetic mutations in a range of cancer types and tumors, as well as to implement these discoveries in diagnostic, therapeutic and prognostic applications – are driving the adoption and, in the not-too-distant future, even routine use of sequencing and related techniques in clinical laboratories.